


A blast from the past

by neitherbluenorgreen



Category: British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston AU - Fandom
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 19:48:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4317543
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neitherbluenorgreen/pseuds/neitherbluenorgreen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When a frozen-in-time scientist finds herself in a new world, a colleague from the future becomes more</p>
            </blockquote>





	A blast from the past

Tom pulled down his mask and fastened the clasps on his protective suit.Looking at his colleagues he saw as much excitement and determination as he felt. This was the big day.

Stepping out of the research building he looked over to the area where all his life a hazy dome of fog had been. The fog – or whatever it was – had begun to clear three days ago and it looked like today they would be able to enter the area.

It had been there for 134 years, since 2017, when a group of scientists had tried to corridor through time. Sources from that time told of a blast wave and a loud crackling. When helpers had arrived there was only the Dome. Right in the middle had been a lab and precisely 0.78km around this lab a sphere had formed, enclosing the lab, the surrounding buildings and the scientists inside.

For 134 years the Dome had been protected, one of the few places where the European War didn’t rage. Giant walls had been build to protect the area from the ever hungry sea that had risen dangerously close.

Tom was one of the scientists living on side, studying the Dome and watching it. A lot of this entailed visual measurements and readings of radiation. Only 50 years prior his mentor had been able to develop a technique to measure the special radiation coming off the Dome. It had been named Benedict-radiation. There was a small ring around the Dome where the Benedict-radiation distorted time, making it pass slower than outside. During his studies Tom had spent an hour inside the Ring and outside two weeks had passed.

The Ring, unlike the Dome, seemed to be ever-changing, becoming wider and retreating again. Once a scientist lost a year after two minutes inside, other times it was just an hour passing in the span of minutes.

Being able to measure the Benedict-radiation, they had found out that it was growing weaker, slowly but steadily. From their readings they had concluded that the Dome would be dissolving soon. Nobody was allowed inside the Ring any more and only one scientist was still inside, having entered it three years ago. They suspected that the Dome would dissolve in the same time the blast wave had grown – if this was true it would be about 30 seconds and the Dome would be gone.

 

Tom bounced on his feet excitedly. Finally to see what was inside the Dome would be one of the biggest scientific events in his lifetime. Outside the perimeter the press was waiting. He would be carrying a small recording device additionally to the cameras build into his eyes.

From the Ring came excited chatter. Martensen was finally exiting the Ring. For him only an hour would have passed and he would be surprised by the changes to the station – more buildings, all the cameras flying above. He would immediately know how long he had been inside, because of the watchtowers, visible from everywhere, showing the date and time. During a hard storm the Ring had been so distorted that the towers showed different times, but most of the time they matched exactly.

“Care for Martensen, bring him up to speed. He mustn’t go inside again nor join the first team, but he will be wanting to be on the fourth team,” Tom sub-vocalized on the channel for organization.

Nodding at this team he walked over to the checkpoint that marked the safe-area outside the Ring. The Ring was being monitored closely. It would be a disaster if the first team moved in only to be stuck in the Ring. Team 2 and 3 were already assembling 120° along the Dome, so they’d be moving in from different directions.

“Readings are dropping at the usual rate for the Dome. The Ring is steady, too,” came Zurlos’ voice over the open channel.

“Make ready for entering.”

Tom closed his eyes for a moment. Collecting himself he hoped everything would go as planned. He had spent all his adult life working for this moment. The scientists he hoped to find inside were familiar to him as old friends. He knew their names and read everything he could find on their lives. He looked over to Swanepoel, the psychologist who would go with his team. He’d be the one to tell the people inside how much time had passed.

“One minute until entering.”

Tom ordered: “Turn off the tower displays. We don’t know how much can be seen from inside.”

The towers shut down, leaving the team members only with their own watches.

“The Ring is steady, move to position three.”

The group moved to the position closest to the Ring. Tom hoped that no flickering would happen now, catching him in a time bubble.

“Everything steady, 30 seconds to enter.”

Before his eyes the fog inside the Dome began to clear. It looked as if it was sucked to the middle. The area before him was still not completely clear, but he could see buildings.

“Strothkämper, Team 3. We can see a person. Looks to be still frozen in time, but intact.”

Tom exhaled. So there were people inside. His biggest fear had been that everybody inside had been killed by the blast wave.

“Enough visuals to identify?” he asked

“Could be Hanson or Becker,” Strothkämper replied.

“Time to enter in 10.”

Tom sucked in a breath and stared at the Dome.

“9.”

“8.”

“7.”

“6.”

“5. Prepare for blast.”

Tom closed his eyes.

“4.”

“3.”

“Flash is coming, keep eyes closed.”

A rumbling sound came from the Dome, like a supersonic boom, just slower.

“2.”

“1. Open eyes, enter.”

Tom moved before his eyes had opened. What he saw looked almost disappointingly normal. No fog, but the familiar buildings he knew from old photos and films.

“It’s Becker, alive and well,” Strothkämper announced. Tom exhaled in relief. Team 3 would split, two people caring for Becker, the rest moving on.

Tom had to keep from running. He knew the way to the lab by heart.

Messages from the other teams stated everything was calm and normal. Tom itched to know how Becker was exactly, but there would be time for that later. When they had found the other scientists.

Team 1 arrived a the door to the lab. A light warned them that an experiment was going on. The door wasn’t locked, so Tom entered.

“Hello there?” he called. “Rescue team here!”

Their suit were designed to not look too alien to the people who had spent the last 134 years inside the dome.

A door opened along the hallway and a tall man looked at them, surprised. Dr. Egwu.

“Rescue? Did something happen?” he asked.

“Your experiment caused a blastwave, sir,” Tom answered. Egwu looked confused. Behind him a woman looked through the door. Quinn.

“A blast wave? That must have been the bright light,” she mused, turning around rushing back into the lab.

“Are you okay, Dr. Egwu?” Tom asked and stayed with the tall man while his team filled around them and entered the lab.

“I feel perfectly fine. How were you able to be here so quickly?”

 

The scientist were reluctant to leave the lab, thinking that they hadn’t finished their experiment. All they had noticed was a flash of light, seemingly everywhere at once and a bit of nausea. Especially Dr. Quinn insisted on finishing her reports first. Since Tom’s team had been the one to find them, the other team leaders happily left the feisty woman in his care.

After everybody else had left the building, Tom was still sitting with Quinn in the lab. Several times she had told him to shut up to let her work in peace, so Tom just sat there, looking at the lab and the woman typing away into an ancient computer. To her it was the latest tech.

She was rather pretty, if a bit overweight. From the pictures of the 21st century he had gathered that this was more than normal. Only in 2080 scientists had cracked the calorie problem. By now it wasn’t hard to tailor every person’s diet to their special needs, quenching the feeling of hunger in a way to prevent overeating and still leaving the eater satisfied.

Her hair was cut short, practical. She wore glasses and loose clothes under her lab coat. For Tom it was a bit like watching an old movie. Nobody today would bother with glasses, when it was so easy to fix every problem one could have with their eyes. But she was alive, breathing, wrapped up in her work.

“Okay,” she said after a while. “Everything noted down. I still have no idea what went wrong, but at least the data is saved now.” She stood up and gathered her things.

“Why are you still wearing that suit?” she asked, cocking her head. “Or rather, if there’s danger, why am I not wearing one? Is it too late for me?” Her voice was very matter-of-fact, showing no fear, just curiosity.

“No, you’re in no danger. It’s just a precaution,” Tom answered.

“Against what?”

Tom sighed. “I can’t tell you right now, I’m sorry.”

Quinn narrowed her eyes. It seemed she was used to get her way. He was a bit amused by how she tackled one problem after the other, first finishing her work, then wondering about the suits.  
“Everything is off. You wear those suits, you were here awfully fast, knowing all our names and quite a lot about what we’re doing here…,” she counted off. “Is this the government shutting us down?”

Tom shook his head. “I can assure you, that is not the case. Everything will be clear soon.”

They had chosen the cafeteria as a gathering room for the time lost scientists. Leading into the area behind the Ring would be too much of a shock for them.

“There are people waiting for you in the cafeteria who will explain everything.”

Tom would be glad to hand her off to a psychologist.

As they walked over to the cafeteria, Quinn seemed unnerved.

“Everything all right, Dr. Quinn?” Tom asked after she had stopped walking a few times, looking around her.

“No, not really,” she replied. “Something seems off.” She gestured at the sky. “It was raining when we started the last run. It can’t have cleared off so fast. Then there are these little black dots – at first I thought it was birds, but they’re hovering.”

Tom looked at her, at a loss for words. He couldn’t just tell her, not without psychological supervision. She had stopped walking again, looking at him more closely, then back at the sky.

“Dr. Quinn, everything will be clear in a few minutes, if you would just follow me…,” he began, unsure how to handle the woman in front of him. He had thought he knew her, but the old documents had hidden a lot of her personality from view. He had to admit, she intrigued him, but right now he wanted to get back to the science, not handle the psychological fallout.

“Your intonation is a bit off, you know that? Even if you’re an international crew like we are, you all pronounce the ‘you’ strangely. And I heard that tall red head say words I never heard.”

She stared at him and Tom raised his hands beseechingly.

“Dr. Quinn, just relax, everything will be explained to you in a moment. Just follow me, please.” The last words were almost a plea, but the woman just stood there. A smile spread over her face.

“I think, we’re not in Kansas any more.”

To Tom’s surprise, Dr. Quinn was exited and elated. On the way to the cafeteria she asked him all sorts of questions, but he tried to evade them. He had heard that two of the other scientists had gone catatonic when they heard how much time had passed and though Dr. Quinn seemed eager but composed, he didn’t want to lose her brilliant mind to being too hasty.

 

In the cafeteria Tom handed Dr. Quinn of to a team of medics and psychologists. He would have liked to stay with her, but he had to check the readings and reports from the three groups. Right now there were more teams sweeping the area, measuring radiation and checking the data from the experiment. There was still much to be learned from the experiment itself, since everything directly related to what happened had been frozen in time, too. Generations of scientists had speculated what the exact experiment had been, but nobody had been able to reconstruct it fully.

Dr. Quinn and the other scientists would be checked for any kind of illness that could be transmitted. The common cold and some other minor illnesses had been eradicated since their lifetime and nobody wanted it to return. The debriefing would happened depending on their mental state. Some would be too shocked by their losses, others, like Dr. Quinn, would be eager to continue working. He wondered when he would be able to talk to her about the experiment in detail – he had been careful not to reveal too much. After all it was a difference if you’ve been gone for 30 years or for 130. It was hard for him to imagine what they must feel now. So much had changed, so much had happened. The scientists’ families had been informed and some relatives were even waiting outside the compound – but none of them had been born when the scientists froze in time.

 

It took nearly three days before Dr. Quinn was cleared. Though she insisted she was fine, the psychologists wanted to be sure before they informed her about how much time had passed and what had changed in that time.

Strictly speaking she wasn’t even qualified to keep working at the compound, but Tom knew that only she would be able to give them the insights they needed. Of her six colleagues, two were still unresponsive, one was sure that they were only playing a trick on them, insisting to be let go and the other three only slowly accepted what had happened. It would take a long time for them to be able to concentrate on other science, when they had to mourn all their family and friends, accept to never see them and learn to handle the new world.

Dr. Quinn almost seemed as if everything was just the next step in a big adventure for her. When Tom met on her on the fourth day after the Dome vanished, she was just preparing a list of things she wanted to do.

“Dr. Quinn, nice to meet you again,” he greeted her and she smiled warmly.

“Please, call me Moira, it seems that everybody’s on a first name basis here.” She rose and shook his hand, which surprised him greatly. He knew that in her time it had still be the greeting of choice, but touching another person felt strange. Dr. Quinn – Moira – seemed unaware of his reaction and chatted on.

“I’m not sure where to start. I already got analysed for this dieting thing and so far my meals were great. I want to learn about everything that happened while we were suspended, but where to start? I hope I can help you.”

Tom had to smile at her eagerness.

“There is very much for you to learn and it’s up to you where to start. We would be very thankful if you’d help us, though, there are some secrets we never could get the Dome and the documents we could access to reveal.”

“The Dome,” she repeated. “It’s strange that the one constant for the last 134 years is gone and I never saw it. But I’d love to help you. Sharing my knowledge is the least I can do – and in return I can learn from you about the future… that is, about now.”

She showed him her notes, a list of subjects that interested her, ranging from world history to social norms and pointed questions. He looked at it and noticed how wide-spread her interests were.

“Let’s start with the familiar and work to the new,” he agreed and lead her to his office.

 

With her help, it was far easier to comb through the ancient data. There was so much that held no relevance to the experiment that had created the Dome, but with their outsider’s perspective it had been hard to judge what was important and what wasn’t. To the great dismay of everybody who worked in the compound, Dr. Becker, who had been sure that this was all a joke, deteriorated quickly. She became paranoid, claiming that they were “the enemy”, wanting to steal her work. When Moira talked to her, she seemed to relax a bit, but only until one day Moira told her that she was helping Tom and the others. From then on Dr. Becker refused to see “the traitor” and talked to nobody any more. Dr. Becker had been the one to set up the experiment, leaving them with some questions about the exact sequence of events. Moira did her best to recreate Dr. Becker’s work, but since Dr. Becker had not written everything down, it was partly guesswork for her, too.

 

When they were not working, Tom told Moira about the world and what had happened outside the Dome. They agreed on keeping it simply, since Moira feared that she might get distracted from her work too much. She was able to concentrate at one thing at a time very much, but at the back of her mind was a lot of curiosity and she joked that she might get lost in wanting to know everything at once.

“I’m glad you only tell me everything in bite-sized portions,” she told Tom over lunch one day.

“I’m feeling like a troglodyte as it is. The other day somebody had to explain a machine to me, I bet little children know how to operate.”

“You’re a fast learner, though. I heard from Dr. Egwu the other day. He’s back with his family in Nigeria and only slowly manages to learn things you picked up very quickly,” Tom assured her. “And he’s not really slow on the uptake, from what I read about him.”

Moira snorted. “It’s funny to be nearly a historical person. I saw a few biographies about me. It feels strange.”

“I can imagine. Probably it would be much worse if not for the European War,” he added.

“You told me a bit about it, it must have been long and gruesome, right?”

Tom nodded. “It was a time we know call the “stillstand”. In most parts of the world science and technology was only accessible for the rich and quite a few states broke up because of that. The difference between rich and poor had become so great that it seemed like whole different worlds. The American continent had nearly blown up a few years before and was back to a state of anarchism with little industry. All over the world governments were besieged and finally what was left of the big European cooperations started fighting for resources and land. Within a few years most of Europe was a war-zone, with no help from outside possible. For some reason they agreed on keeping the Dome out of it. The war lasted 30 years and it took nearly as long again to rebuild everything. The world changed a lot in the time afterwards, but before science could discover new things, we had to repair the old.”

“I can’t imagine how the world might look without it. Over a century of new inventions and discoveries…” Moira mused.

“Who knows, maybe you’d have been out of the Dome much earlier.”

“Ha, and not get to know you? That would have been a shame,” she joked and grinned at him.  
Tom only grinned back, but for a moment he wondered what exactly she meant with that.

 

Moira groaned and turned her chair around to face Tom’s. “It’s no use. We can keep guessing, but it would be much easier to just look at it!” she complained.

“I know you want to go and look at the collider, but it’s dangerous,” Tom murmured, not looking up from his screen. They had been over this a few times.

“If you ever want to recreate this experiment, you need to know exactly what Becker did down there. The only way is to either wait for her to regain her sanity or go down!” Moira insisted.

Now he turned to look at her. She looked at him angrily and for a moment he couldn’t help but admired her beauty. Her eyes were blazing and she had her hands on her hips, accentuating her curves. He admired her curves, the longer he knew her, the more he understood that in the past men and women had accentuated their differences rather than trying to hide them.

“I can try again to be granted access but the last tries were failures, Moira,” he tried to calm her down.

“Do they want this to work or not?” she demanded and left him alone in the lab.

Probably they were working too close together for too long, he mused. It had been three months since the Dome vanished, Moira still lived in the compound and Tom hadn’t seen his flat more than three times. They spent so much times together that their frustration build up much faster, as they only had the same things to talk about. Of course he was still telling her about the world outside, but he had the impression she’d rather get this done and then see for herself.

He didn’t like the idea for some reason. Sure, he wanted to know what had created the Dome and if it could be recreated, but would he see her again after they finished here?

 

When Moira came back, he was expecting her eagerly. She looked at him with a guilty expression, her shoulders slumped.

“I’m sorry for going off on you, Tom,” she apologized. “I’m just so frustrated…”

“Well, it has worked,” he grinned.

“What has worked?”

“I must have carried my frustration with you when I went to talk to Prof. Yin and the committee again. They agreed, finally.”

Moira stared at him, unbelievingly. “Really?” she asked and he nodded with a broad grin.

With two steps she was in front of him and hugged him tightly. Not noticing his awkward reaction she turned around and started to gather things.

“When can we start?”

“Early in the morning tomorrow,” he murmured, still surprised by the sudden contact.

“Awesome, let’s get our things together and do science!”

 

Even though they were ready with their preparations in the evening, it took nearly until noon before they could ascend into the tunnels below the old laboratories.

Since the Dome had basically been a bubble, there had been structural damage to some tunnels when the bubble vanished. Geologists deemed it not too dangerous, since the area hadn’t shaken and there wasn’t much seismic activity, but still there had to be several precautions. They had only been allowed to go at all because they didn’t need to go too deep. Both had to haul much more equipment than they needed, just in case a tunnel would collapse. They had to promise to check the readouts on the meters they were given every five minutes and stay in contact the whole time.

Their starting point was within the area where the Dome had been and Tom was still fascinated how well the old technology worked. The generators had just continued working, unmarked by time, just as the people inside. Most of the buildings could just stay as they were and everything still ran smoothly.

As they descended through the concrete staircases, Moira explained some of the technology to Tom. So far they had talked mostly about the experiment or his time, but now she could give him some insights about her time.

When they reached the door to the room with the controls, their connection with the team above ground got worse.

“You have 15 minutes, after that you have to leave. We’re not sure why the connection is so bad, so we don’t want to risk anything,” they were told. Moira scoffed and went to show Tom around. The level they were on held a room with controls for the collider, a pause-room and rest-rooms. Their experiment had originally been a small one, held at a time when not many people worked there, but everything was quite spacious, accommodating a lot more people for bigger experiments.

“Who would have thought that our little test would have such an effect?” Moira wondered. “We were only to run a series of tries and three weeks later there would have been a real run. If we’d have known…” Her voice trailed off. Tom knew by now that after a bitter divorce she hadn’t had many people left in her life back then, but other members of her team were fathers and mothers. It was one of the reasons she had been able to adapt more quickly – she had been at a time in her life when her research had been her everything.

“I wonder what Becker did,” she said and they looked at the readings and setting in the control room.

“We should have been down here much sooner,” Tom stated after a while. “We’re lucky that everything is still the same, but it’s been three months. It would have saved us so much work.”

“I agree. I didn’t see any damages when we went down, I wonder if there was another reason to postpone this.”

The crackling of the communication system startled both of them.

“Did you check your meters?” a nervous voice asked them.  
“Everything looks fine here,” Tom assured them.

“Well, we lost contact a few times now, could you hurry up?”

Moira went back to noting down the settings. Tom looked over her shoulder and hissed suddenly.

“What is it, Tom?” she asked and he pointed at some numbers.

“The settings here look not like what we predicted at all.”

“We went from the numbers in the planning stage, but this looks far more accelerated. I’m not sure, but it looks more like the numbers they had planned for the big run,” Moira murmured.

“So Becker did something wrong?” Tom asked, but Moira shook her head.

“I think she did it on purpose. She was to leave soon after our experiment and was bitter that she wouldn’t see the big run. It nearly looks as if she decided to change that.”

Moira rubbed her head.

“It shouldn’t have gone undetected, unless somebody was working with her. How could anybody be so stupid?”

A deep growl answered her. Both of them looked up. The noise seemed to come from the floor above them. The communicator crackled again.  
“Get out of there! We think the tunnels above you are…”

Only silence followed. Moira and Tom looked at each other, grabbed their notes and hurried to the door.  
They ran up the stairs, when another loud, grumbling noise thundered through the building. Tom opened a door and pulled Moira inside, closing the door behind them. Seconds later something crashed on the other side of the door and it shook.

When the noise had subsided, Tom opened the door carefully. Outside was a lot of smoke and rubble. He tried to communicator.

“We’re stuck inside, but have no injuries,” he said and they waited for an answer. Nothing.

“We can’t climb up, we’ll have to wait for a rescue team,” Moira stated, looking up.

Unsure what to do, they stood on the platform leading to the stairs. The communicator made a tinny noise and fell silent again.

“We can’t get higher up to get a better signal, can we?” Moira asked, looking at the rubble blocking the stairs.

“We’d better not. We can’t be sure how steady the structure is.”

Another crackling from the communicator and a voice said: “Stay were you are. We read you, but the connection is worse than before. What level are you on?”

“B7,” Moira replied.

“Okay. Stay there, we’ll try to get you out as soon as possi–” and the connection was dead again.

“Let’s take a look where we are then,” Tom suggested and they went back inside.

“It’s one of the conference rooms. People from the control room and press would meet here. At least there are toilets and some supplies here.” Opening a door, Moira revealed a cupboard full of small water and juice bottles, packs of cookies and other sweets.

“What a pity there’s no wine here,” she joked. “A 300-year old red would be quite the treat.”

They emptied their bags onto a big table, looking at the food they had been forced to take with them, luckily.

“What are those?” Tom asked when Moira took a bag of gummi bears out of the cupboard.

“Gummi bears. Sugary sweets. Probably not on the list of things we should eat,” she grinned.

“I bet you’ll find them too sweet.”

Tom tried one and marvelled at the taste.

“Fruity, very, very sweet and strangely chewy. I think I like them,” he judged and Moira giggled.

“Take care, not that you get a tummy ache.”

 

After they had explored the conference room and everything adjacent, they settle down on the big table and looked at their notes.

“I wish we had more equipment here,” Moira grumbled. “It’s nice to have these oxygen tanks, but an interface to get to our data from above ground would be even better.

“Well, we have to make do with what we have. Maybe we’ll have to spend the time in another way,” Tom replied. Moira looked up and looked at him with a strange look on her face, a dark smirk he couldn’t quite place.

“Oho, Tom,” she grinned, but went to look at her data without explaining what she meant.

 

Two hours later Tom looked at his watch and sighed: “We’re turning in circles. We really need the other data.”

“So, what do you propose?”

“I don’t know, there isn’t much here to entertain us. Fretting won’t work either. I’ll try to get a signal from above again,” he said and went back to the staircase.

Apart from some crackling and a “stay calm”, he got nothing. The readouts on the meters still showed nothing dangerous. He wondered what had caused the crash and went back inside.

Inside Moira assembled all the pillows she could find in the room and had arranged them around a couch, making a big bed. Together with blankets from another cupboard it looked rather inviting.

“Are you tired already?” Tom asked and looked at the readouts for the air inside the room. Everything was fine.

“Well, my grandmother – whose wisdom is ancient by now – always said, that if you don’t know what to do and are out of inspiration, take a nap.”

She sat down on the make-shift bed and gestured invitingly.

“Don’t fret, your virtue is in no danger,” she proclaimed and wiggled her eyebrows.  
“My what?” he asked, but she just laughed, taking it as a joke.

When he lay down he found that he was indeed a bit tired already. It was late afternoon and they had been up in the early hours of the morning, with much excitement. Quickly both dozed off.

 

When he woke up, he found Moira lying with her back to him, closer than before. He wasn’t sure who had moved, but his arm was around her waist. He lay there for a moment, puzzled to find that he didn’t mind. In fact, he had wondered from time to time how it would be to touch her skin. While he was still pondering, she woke up and stretched. Turning around to him, their faces were suddenly very close.

“Hey,” she murmured and smiled lazily.

“Hey”, he replied. He looked at her and couldn’t help but smile back. Suddenly she moved even closer and pressed her lips to his. He gasped and felt her tongue slip over his lower lip. He scrambled away and stared at her.

“I’m sorry,” she groaned. “I totally misread your signals. I thought you liked me and I really think you’re sexy, so…,” she trailed off and sighed, standing up without looking at him.

“Most of us can’t have sex any more,” Tom blurted out.

Moira raised an eyebrow and looked at him. “Wait, what?”

“During the war, chemical and biological warfare ran mad. One strain of a virus meant to decimate the enemy spread far wider than anybody had anticipated. About 75% of the world population today can’t reproduce like… you used to. Creating offspring by artificial means is no problem, but intimacy beyond friendly or motherly love is seen as… vulgar and useless. There are means to stimulate those who still have the urges, but this is done very privately.”

Moira gasped. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t want to offend you,” she apologized. Tom shrugged and smiled.

“I’m not offended. You couldn’t have known that. I left it out.” He seemed about to add something, but fell silent.

“Well, I didn’t ask about social conventions, did I?” she laughed and shrugged. “I’m warned now!”

Turning again, she went into the direction of the bathrooms.

Tom lay back again and stared at the ceiling. Apart from the initial surprise it had been very nice, actually.

When she came back, he had gotten up and sat over their data again.

“Your grandmother was right. I think I have an idea,” he informed her, pointing at a set of numbers. She sat next to him and creased her brows.  
“What exactly?”

“There’s a theorem, fairly new that includes a formula these numbers fit into,” he explained. They spent the next four hours sorting the data, Moira doing her best to remember details from both sets of experiments. It was close to midnight when Tom went to check on the communicator again. He wondered why it didn’t work inside the conference room. When he stepped onto the stairs, it began to beep immediately.

“We’re ready here, but would prefer to wait for natural light,” a voice informed him.

“We’re good, see you tomorrow morning,” he confirmed and went back inside.

They agreed to go back to bed, to sleep some more.

Tom was nervous, wondering if he should tell Moira that it had been nice to feel her close. Pictures from his youth came to his mind, his mother explaining to him that sexual feelings were natural, but just like other natural things, very private. He knew that some of people still had “natural” sex, but it was frowned upon, like taking drugs had been in the last century. He had read about the history of sex and how long it had taken for some groups to be accepted in their sexuality. To Moira this probably looked backwardly, but society celebrated it as the triumph of sense over lust, being able to leave behind the messiness and distraction, concentrating on progress.

Moira had already stretched out on the bed and he turned off the lights, padding back to the bed and lying down, too.

“Before I leave the compound, you’ll have to give me a crash course in social acceptable behaviour,” Moira said and yawned.

“It will be my pleasure,” he grinned into the darkness. After a few moments of silence he asked: “What do you want to do, afterwards?”

“I don’t know. Travel, learn. I’ll have to earn money, somehow I guess.”

“You already have some. There’s a fund for the survivors of the Dome, I heard and you’ll be paid for your work here.”

She made a pleased noise, but he could tell that she was tired and kept silent. He tried not to think of touching her, when she suddenly spoke again, pulling him out of his thoughts.

“So. Are you one of the 75%?” she asked, her voice sleepy.

“The what?” he murmured puzzled.

“Those who can’t have sex,” she replied. She couldn’t see him blushing violently in the dark.

“No, I’m not,” he whispered after a while, but she had already fallen asleep.

 

They were rescued early the next morning. The earth below the Dome had shifted, but apart from the staircase there wasn’t much damage.

Moira was eager to go back to the lab and with the new and old data they were able to reconstruct most of the old experiment.

Just two weeks later everything they could do had been done. There would be a new experiment, but first a new collider would have to be build, this time one that would work without people having to be near it. Tom would keep on working on the project, together with his old team, trying to see if they would be able to recreate it in a smaller scale. 134 years were a long time to wait for results.

Moira had decided to travel to some places that had held significance in her old life. She had been invited to several universities, especially departments of history. She was a living, breathing primary source.

On her last evening in the compound, Tom decided to visit her. There had been a small party earlier the evening, but he had not found the guts to talk to her.

When she opened the door, she was only wearing a long shirt, already preparing for the night.

“Hey,” she said and smiled. “What can I do for you?”

He swallowed hard. “I have to talk to you, Moira. May I come in?”

She nodded and he followed her inside. She sat on her bed, leaving him to sit beside her or on the chair across the room. Taking a deep breath, he sat down beside her.

“So, what’s the matter? You didn’t talk much lately,” she invited him to speak.

“I know and I’m sorry. I have to admit that I will miss you a lot,” he began, unsure how to continue.

“That’s sweet. I’ll miss you, too. You have been such a great help in navigating this strange future…”

He nodded and smiled.

“Well. There’s something else,” he said, staring at his hands. Her naked legs next to him distracted him, while bringing his thought right back to why he was there.

“I’m listening,” she replied, amusement in her voice.

“I can’t stop thinking about when we were caught below grounds,” he started again.

“Oh, I hope it hasn’t been too much of a trauma,” she laughed. “I guess you’re preparing to tell me more about what to avoid out there.”

“No, Moira.” Finally he looked at her. “I came to tell you that I regret stopping you. If you’d be from my time, you’d be appalled, telling me to get some treatment, but you’re not.”

Moira’s eyes had grown wide at this. She looked at him questioningly.

“Do you mean you… want sex?” she asked, her voice breathy. He took her hand and nodded.

“Since I met you my urges grew constantly. I have been in love and my partners were never interested in sex. We have to keep it so private that even the people we love don’t know if we’re sexual or not.”

“Humans will never change, will they?” she asked, shaking her head. Softly she cupped his face with her free hand. “I’m not sure a relict like me should voice her opinion on this.”

He took her hand and kissed her palm, tasting her skin. A shiver ran through both of them.

“Do you still want me?” His voice was suddenly husky.

“I buried myself in work not to think about you,” she replied. “Why do you think I’m preparing to flee?”

Hearing those words, he cast aside all doubt. He had been taught that this was dirty and below him, but all he knew was that he had to taste her, to touch her.

Pulling her close, he pressed his lips to hers. She giggled and pressed a hand to his chest.

“Wait, Tom. I will show you how, okay?”

He nodded and let her push him onto his back. She lay down next to him and tenderly kissed his cheek, her lips soft on his skin. His arms went around her, giving him the feeling that this was how it was meant to be.

She left a soft kiss in his lips, looking at him, smiling. Slowly she licked over his lower lip, then sucked it into her mouth. He closed his eyes, enjoying the feeling of her so close, the taste of her lips, her smell. Again she kissed his lips and he opened his mouth, remembering their first kiss. Her tongue slipped into his mouth and he moaned, but she was only teasing him. He opened his eyes and saw her grinning back at him.

“You like this,” she announced and he grinned back.

“I do.” She let her hand move over his chest and to his crotch, until she cupped him through the fabric of his trousers. He was already semi-hard and every touch fuelled his inner fire.

“Are you sure, you want to have your first time with an old lady?” she asked. He silenced her by kissing her again, following her example of running his tongue over hers. She sighed and pressed herself closer to him. Satisfied that she was as eager as he was, he kissed her deeper, following her lead, imitating her. Her hands wandered over his body, and he mirrored her movements, discovering her soft curves and where her skin was especially sensitive to his touch.

“Take off you clothes,” she whispered after a while and he complied, watching her take off her shirt and knickers.

“You’re amazing,” he whispered and she cocked her head. “You are beautiful, Tom,” she replied and ran her hand over his chest, down to his member, already stiff.

He crawled over to her and kissed her again.

“Tell me what to do,” he murmured, kissing her neck and shoulder. “I want to please you.”

“You’re a natural,” she replied and lay back down. She took his hand and led it between her legs.

“Discover me, Tom,” she whispered and he trailed his fingers over the soft skin between her legs. She shivered when he softly ran a finger over her labia and groaned when he parted them. He trailed his fingers slowly over her, listening to the way her breath hitched or she groaned, depending on what he did. He enjoyed seeing her like that, being the reason she moaned and trembled.

“There, Tom,” she hissed and he repeated the circles he had drawn over the hard little nub he had discovered. “More,” she demanded hoarsely and he grinned, intensifying his movements. Her face was a wonder to observe, her flushed skin, her fluttering eyelids. He bent down to kiss her, keeping his circles, slowly speeding up. Under his hand she began to buck against him, crying softly into his mouth. Suddenly she arched her back and a deep, throaty moan escaped her. Panting she fell back, blinking a few times.

“That was the best orgasm I had in 136 years,” she said and he laughed.

“I’m glad to hear that,” he grinned and licked her stickiness off his fingers. He nodded at her and licked his lips. Her eyes widened and she grinned wickedly.

“Before we continue down that road, it’s your turn. Lay on your back, please.”

After a bit of shuffling, he was on his back again and she smiled down at him. He was still hard, her moans having only made him harder. She straddled his lap and rubbed herself against him. When he felt her wetness against him, he hissed sharply.

“I want you to relax. You have to do nothing, but enjoy, Tom,” she whispered, running her hands over his chest. His member twitched against her, her every touch a sweet torture.

He couldn’t help but grab her hips, grinding against her and she laughed softly. She bent down and kissed him deeply, taking his hardness into her hand and guiding him into her.

Buried in her heat he felt as if he had to explode. She held still for a moment, until his breathing was more even again and then began to rock her hips against him.

He felt her warm and wet inside around his cock. Felt every move she made. The slow and steady up and down … the grinding against him. And it was slowly driving him insane. Every time he felt the pressure, the feeling that he was about to explode, she slowed down. She kissed his neck and up to his ear, nibbled on his earlobe. And with that she sped up. Rocking harder against him. Until he again felt that pressure from his groin. That feeling that something had to come lose in him, that something wanted to break free.

After a few times he couldn’t stand it any more. As she slowed down again, he seized her hips and forced her up. Only a little bit but enough so that he could thrust his pelvis against hers. Both moaned loud at this. He couldn’t let go of her. If she would slow down one more time he knew he’d go insane. So he held her. He pushed her up and pulled her down. On every up he pushed his bottom more into the mattress and on every down he thrust deep into her, pushing his pelvis up to her.

Her moans became louder and he couldn’t tell any more if he was moaning himself. He felt her kiss him, felt her scratch his chest, felt her hands and lips all over his upper body. It was all a big haze for him afterwards … but in that moment he seemed to truly live for the first time in his life. All the groans and moans, all the sweat and all the pounding. All the sweet pain, when she raked his chest. He couldn’t tell how long it lasted but it ended too soon for his liking.

She thrust down against him and he couldn’t keep it inside this time. He felt the pressure becoming unbearable. And then he moaned loud, pushed even harder into her and he felt it. He felt it for the first time. That twitching of his cock. That feeling of relieve as he spurt into her. He couldn’t believe how good that felt. How anyone could want to miss that. And then he felt her twitch around his member. Heard her loud moan. Saw her quiver. And felt her collapse over him still breathing heavily.

He slung his arms around her and while she still twitched and moaned he kissed her neck and felt so very grateful. So relieved. So happy. Feeling her so close to him made it only better.

 

Wrapped around each other they just lay there, catching their breath. He caressed her back and just enjoyed having her near.

“Tom?” she whispered after a while.

“Yes?”

“I still want to travel.”

He nodded and kissed her head. He knew that having sex didn’t mean entering a relationship in her time. He swallowed. 

“I understand.”

“I don’t think you do. I want to travel with you, I want to see your world and make it ours. I never want to leave you.”

“I love you,” he answered, because that was all there was to say.


End file.
